A multi method assessment of anaemia and response to iron supplementation among women in West Bengal, India

Tarun K. Roy, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Sujata Ganguly, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

The main aim of this paper is to evaluate the usefulness of four clinical indicators and low cost methods of hemoglobin concentration tests at the community level where resources are scarce and anemia is widespread. Receiver Operating Characteristic curve is used to evaluate diagnostic accuracy of screening tests. Secondly, this study also examines the iron deficiency anemia among women in West Bengal, India by monitoring changes in haemoglobin concentration in response to iron supplementation. Sensitivity of different symptoms of anaemia is low although specificity is very high. Clinical indicators namely pallor of eyelid and palm are showing better compared to the pallor of nail and tongue. Simple test of haemoglobin concentration, which requires less skill, equipments, and low cost, is as good as gold standard method. Majority of the anaemic women responded positively to iron supplementation. Thus, we may conclude that the high level of anaemia is due to deficiency of iron in the study area